


first watch

by mahariels



Series: all your bridges are burning [5]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Huddling For Warmth, Idiots in Love, Pre-Relationship, Sharing a Bed, Watching Someone Sleep, everyone is bad at feelings, maccready is bad at feelings, maccready's inner narration is still filthy, the sole survivor is bad at feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-03 02:34:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5273276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahariels/pseuds/mahariels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Privately, he's pretty sure the only hell she could give to anyone right this moment is that creepy fucking toy monkey she shot the head off of in the last water treatment facility, but MacCready values his balls and appreciates that they are currently functioning as well as attached to his body and thus says exactly fucking nothing except, "Got it, Boss."</p>
            </blockquote>





	first watch

They've been on the road so fucking long this time that MacCready is almost starting to miss the weird, cheerful energy of Sanctuary, and he fucking hates Sanctuary. The best you can say about it is that there's clean water and a place to take a shit in peace, or at least without having to worry about stepping on a mirelurk nest with your pants down. Not that he's ever done that before. The worst you can say about Sanctuary is that it's full of settlers with complaints and long faces who expect the Boss to do everything for  _free_ , and that creepy junkie psychic always smiles at him funny, like she knows something he doesn't, and he can feel her eyes following him long after he loses sight of her. 

Whatever the joke is, he's not fucking laughing.

Tonight they're somewhere out in the middle of the goddamn wilderness, sun below the horizon and the chill starting to set in a way he can tell it's going to be fucking  _ball splitting cold_ , when she suggests they bed down for the night. He knows she would've kept going if she could've, but her face has that pinched-shut look it gets sometimes when she doesn't want to admit she needs more than a stimpak and whatever food's left in the bottom of the pack, so of course he's not going to fucking argue with her. 

It could be worse. They're on a rocky plateau. Not much cover, so a fire's out, but there's enough of an outcrop that they won't be immediately apparent from at least the one side. And whoever's on watch will be able to catch the approach of anything looking to kill, maim, or eat them in whatever the preferred order happened to be that day.

"I'll take first shift," he says. Her scarred chin juts out the way it always does when she's going to do something fucking stupid (he probably should be more concerned about the fact that he knows her this well at this point) so he interrupts before she can open her goddamn mouth. "C'mon, Boss. I'm still all fu-- on edge from running into those muties. I can't sleep anyway."

She regards him over the rim of her glasses, eyes narrowed. It's a very long moment of silence, but then her shoulders sag, just a bit. "If you let me sleep through second watch, Kid, there'll be hell to pay. You need sleep."

Privately, he's pretty sure the only hell she could give to anyone right this moment is that creepy fucking toy monkey she shot the head off of in the last water treatment facility, but MacCready values his balls and appreciates that they are currently functioning as well as attached to his body and thus says exactly fucking nothing except, "Got it, Boss."

She glares at him, still, like she doesn't quite believe him. But when she starts to unroll the sleeping bag pinned to her rucksack without further argument, he knows he was right. It's a hollow kind of victory, but he'll take it.

They've been together long enough now that he's had a chance to really  _watch_ her. Get to know her. She might glare at him but she still laughs at his jokes, sometimes, if he's lucky. A rusty sound like she's not entirely used to it. She always looks a bit surprised afterward, and slightly offended. It's those little details he finds so fucking funny about the Boss, like the way she carefully takes off and folds her glasses and sets them at her side on the ground before crawling into the sack. Like the two of them weren't running like hell from a mutie touchdown attempt a few hours earlier. Like she lives in a world where she can actually afford to worry about breaking something delicate. It's one of the few indicators she ever gives him that she's not really from  _this time_ and for some reason it makes him feel weird as hell in the pit of his stomach. So he's not going to think about that right now either.

Instead, he sits the fuck down and shuts the fuck up. That's a skill he's developed since he lost Lucy, since he left Duncan behind to try to find a cure, since he fucked everything up by throwing his lot in with the Gunners. The Mayor of Little Lamplight did not sit the fuck down or shut the fuck up, but Robert Joseph MacCready isn't the Mayor of anything anymore. It still hits him funny sometimes. Lately it's mostly when he's calling her  _Boss_.

He doesn't take the time to take apart his rifle and clean it, though it needs it badly. It's fundamentally a bad state of affairs in this situation, with only the Boss to back him up. Worse than getting caught with your pants down in a mirelurk nest.  _Which he has definitely never done._ He glances sideways at her, just to see how she's doing, and she's out fucking cold, curled up tight in the fetal position despite the fact that she's still wearing her combat armor and that stupid knit gray hat. Her mouth is hanging open, slack. Even in the shadows, he can see the dark circles swathed beneath her eyes.

Unbefuckinglievable.

He shivers, trying and failing to rub some fucking warmth into his hands. The gloves he always wears are for utility rather than comfort; they keep his grip steady but he can't afford to ruin his sense of balance and touch -- the mainstays of his deadliness. Not for a stupid little thing like that. He looks over at her again, but he can't tell if she's as cold as he is because she's passed the fuck out. She broke something in her hand earlier that day, when a mutie bashed her gun arm out of the way with a bladed board; had laughed it off, jabbed a stimpack into her hand, and hoisted her rifle again as soon as she'd regained movement in her fingers. Calm as hell. Shot the monster in the head. But that was the Boss for you.

After they were done looting the corpses, they walked another ten miles with full packs because she wouldn't drop that fucking hot plate she picked up in Medford despite his protests.

Yeah, he's not waking her up for the second watch.

Time passes. Minutes tick by, then hours. He counts the number of explosions he can spot in the distance. He counts his remaining bullets. He tries to whistle a tune, but his lips are too chapped and dry to carry it. He counts caps in his head, which is usually one of his favorite ways to relax, but even that's not doing it tonight.

None of it makes the cold any fucking easier to deal with. He wonders what it must've been like, to live in a time when setting a fire at a campsite in the wilderness wasn't asking for any roving raider or yao guai to hone the fuck in on you. Must've been nice. Nice and  _warm,_ like he certainly fucking isn't right now. Fuck, it's cold. He can feel his fingers burning with it, his nose running. He tries to remember what day it actually is but all he knows is Diamond City's taken down the Christmas decorations already. It's sometime near the new year and he's freezing his balls off. At least it hasn't snowed, yet. 

There are options, of course, He could wake the Boss up and let her freeze her tits out here instead, for a fair exchange, but he's sure as hell not going to do that. She'd never admit it but she needs the sleep more than he does tonight. He could try to walk it off, but that kind of movement's asking for some goddamn monster to notice you. And that's really it. He's never been fond of using chems for that kind of thing; backfires on you more often than not. So he's really got two options, when it comes down to it. Sit there and freeze, or get into the goddamn sack with her. Either way is fucking dangerous, but at least if she punches him in the face, he probably also won't get frostbite.

She shifts, and he tenses. But she's not awake, just having a dream of some kind. He can see the change in her face, the way her mouth screws up and her forehead creases, all of the slack lines gone. She's not particularly fucking smiley even on a good day, but man, this is something else. Even in her sleep, the Boss is so  _controlled_. Her mouth twitches but her body's still, almost like she's frozen in place. The only other thing is a quiet, high pitched noise, totally unlike her, that escapes from her mouth. Not exactly a groan, not exactly a scream. Sounds like something fucking dying -- at the very least, a _hell_ of a nightmare -- and that's all he needs to make up his mind.

So MacCready crawls into the fucking sack with her, half expecting a fist to the face or the stomach, but she's deeply asleep enough that she doesn't wake, just lays there. Barely shaking. Despite the confines of the sleeping bag there's still some space between them he doesn't quite have the balls to broach. This close to her, though, he can see every detail of her. The old scar on the right cheek, faded and white. The newer scars, courtesy of a deathclaw he helped her kill, still red and angry on the left. The freckles exploding all over her face that he sometimes and entirely inexplicably wants to lick.

Get yourself together, you stupid  _fuck_.

What he hadn't banked on was how fucking weird it would be, being this close to the Boss after years of not being close to anyone, of guarding his fucking back and knocking out on his own and sleeping with one eye open, cold despite everything. He can feel her thighs pressed against his. Despite her distress her body radiates heat like a furnace and the longer they lay there the more he starts to feel his goddamn feet again, thank  _fuck_. Seems the nightmare passed, at least, though her breathing is still shallow and rough. He doesn't know what the fuck to do with his arms, so he props himself up on one elbow, so he can keep an eye on the approach. The other one, somehow, finds itself resting on the slight curve of her hip. In his defense there's pretty much no fucking room, but it feels wrong, like a violation. 

When he does it, though, she sighs in her sleep and he can almost feel some of the tension leave her. She pushes herself closer against him and he almost --  _almost_  -- stops breathing for a second, totally and completely out of his fucking depth. He can blow a raider's brains out from 400 paces, of course, but it's been literally years since he's slept with a woman like this. Her head is burrowed against his chest, right beneath his chin; one of her arms winds its way around his side. He can feel her breath on his neck, hot and humid beneath the flap of his jacket. Whatever demons troubled her in her sleep, they seem to have left her now, and at least that's fucking something, ain't it? 

He lays that way for some time, watching the horizon for danger but mostly listening to the sound of her breathing, deeper and slower now. His own breath is slowing in time with it, gradually falling in step, slow and soothing, but he can't fucking afford to fall asleep now. He's got a fucking job to do, and he'll be damned if he fails at it. But no one could really fault him, right, if he just smoothed the tiny wisps of hair escaping from under the hat down a bit. If he ran a finger down the side of her neck, tracing the outline of her collarbone beneath her battered jumpsuit. Despite everything, despite how fucking filthy they both are, caked in blood and grime, her skin feels good under his freezing fingertips. Warm and alive, like nothing else in the world right now. Her blood is still beating. She's still  _alive_. And determined. And ready to fight to stay that way.

It's easy to forget, with the way she is, but the Boss isn't that much older than MacCready himself, if you don't count the two centuries she spent as an icicle. But right now, watching her sleeping, relaxed in a way he never sees her when she's awake, it isn't that hard to remember.

When she rises in the morning with the sun, there's hell to pay. Of course there is. She promised, and the Boss always keeps her word.

But for once, he doesn't mind ponying up the cost.


End file.
